Your customer's face is completely covered with red
blotches. Steam rises from his scalp; smoke pours out of his ears.
His tone is measured, barely escaping pursed lips and gritted
teeth, as he tells you exactly where he'd like to stick your
product. This guy is about to blow, and every person in your store
and the surrounding three counties is going to hear how you screwed
up. At this point, it's not so much what you did or didn't
do to turn Mr. Joe Nice Guy into the customer from hell: It's
how you calm him down, turn unreasonable to satisfied, and save the
relationship.

This is where Shaun
Belding and LESTER come in. A veteran retail performance
consultant, Belding has created a system to help you deal with
those customers from hell. We've asked Belding, who's also
the author of Dealing with the Customer from Hell: a Survival Guide and
founder of Kanata, Ontario-based Belding Skills Development Corp.
(http://www.beldingskills.com),
to share his peacekeeping tactics with us.

Entrepreneur.com: What is
your definition of a "customer from hell"?

Shaun Belding: It's
anybody who's behaving unreasonably. That would be the really
simple answer. The point I make [in the book] is that it's not
necessarily an unreasonable person, but it's somebody who's
behaving badly or unreasonably.

Entrepreneur.com: Why is
understanding unreasonable customers important to the overall
well-being of both you and your employees?

"Most
unpleasant customers are not unreasonable people. They are
unsatisfied people who are behaving unreasonably."

Belding: We're taught,
as businesspeople, how to interact positively. We're taught how
to smile and sell and how to be nice. And then all of a sudden,
we're faced with a very negative situation. It's very
traumatic, and the experience sticks with people a long, long time.
And in many cases, the experience actually has an effect on the way
people conduct their business in the future. It's really quite
amazing how much of an impact this can have on people.

Entrepreneur.com: You say
you can't win with a customer from hell, but of course, you
don't want to lose either. What can you hope to accomplish?

Belding: What you hope to
accomplish is to have everybody walk away from the situation
feeling satisfied and that the right thing happened. [It's the]
classic win-win situation. And really, in everything but the rarest
of cases, it's possible to achieve that.

Entrepreneur.com: You have a
chapter in your book called "Preventative Medicine." What
are a few tips from that chapter-things you can do to prevent
conflict before it happens?

Belding: Philosophically as
a business-in any business-you should have the customer make the
rules; you shouldn't make the rules. As long as you have rules
that you're going to force your customer to abide
by-"That's the way we do things and if you don't do it
that way, then we're not going to do business with
you"-then you're going to have problems. Examples would be
a store that has no return policy or a service repair company [that
won't] say when they're going to arrive, forcing [a
customer] to sit home all day long. If you want to avoid
challenges, the best preventative maintenance is to find out what
your customers want and deliver it exactly and precisely. Don't
make the customers follow your rules; you follow their rules.

Entrepreneur.com: What is
LESTER? How can this help you diffuse a bad situation?

Belding: LESTER is a process
revolving around two principles. The first is that most unpleasant
customers are not unreasonable people. They are unsatisfied people
who are behaving unreasonably. The second is that in most cases,
once we take the time to fully understand why this person is
agitated and behaving the way they are, then the problem becomes
much easier to solve and far less traumatic. I ask people in
seminars, "After a customer walked away, have you ever said,
'What's that guy's problem?'" And everybody
laughs and says yes, but the thing is, you should ask that question
while the person is there.

In LESTER, the "L" stands for listening, which is
perhaps self-evident but there's an awful lot of ways to do it
wrong. The "E" stands for echoing, which is reflective
listening where you reflect back to the customer the issue as the
customer perceives it. [That way you can] make sure you understand
the issue, and it lets the customer know you heard it. The customer
won't feel the need then to repeat himself or herself over and
over again and stay agitated. The "S" stands for
sympathizing, which is really validating the customer's
emotional state. It's simply saying, "From what you've
told me, I can understand why you're frustrated." People
like to hear that. When somebody says, "Wow, I hear where
you're coming from. I understand that," it takes a lot of
the confrontational aspect out of the conflict.

The "T" stands for thanking a customer. When most
people are dissatisfied, they don't tell you about it; they
tell everyone else in the world. So these nasty customers, as
unpleasant as what they say or do may be, are giving you some
pretty valuable information. And it's genuine to be able to say
"Thanks for telling me about this. Thank you for giving me a
chance to fix it." The "E" stands for evaluate.
Theoretically, if you've gone through the first four steps,
you've been able to bring the customer's emotional state
down to where it's not a fight anymore; it's a discussion.
The evaluation stage is where you can work with the customer to
come up with a solution instead of butting heads. And then the
"R" simply stands for responding. Once you come to a
decision, do it. Don't just say, "OK, that's
great," and stick it on a shelf.

Entrepreneur.com: What
advice would you offer a business owner who wants to train his or
her staff to handle these situations?

Belding: The best advice I
can give an entrepreneur who has employees is not to underestimate
the impact that negative customers or experiences have on
performance. If your employees are complaining about a customer
from hell, help them deal with it because that's going to limit
their performance if they're not able to deal with it.